Awkward bluetooth connectivity issue

[bigandclever]

I have a new DKN EnduRun treadmill that has Bluetooth 4.0; I should be able to connect an app, available for iOS and Android, called Kinomap to it.

I can successfully connect my OnePlus A6013 phone with android 11, which is Bluetooth 5, using the Android app.

I am unable to connect my IPad Pro 9.7" 1st gen A1674 with iOS 15.0, which is Bluetooth 4.2, using the iOS app. The app just sits spinning at the 'looking for a device' stage and never finds it.

What might this be due to? Is this an app thing, an incompatible device thing, a Bluetooth thing? I have raised tickets with both DKN and Kinomap, but PH usually comes up with ideas more quickly

I am aware the treadmill won't be able to connect to 2 devices by Bluetooth at the same time, and have gone through all the disconnect / forget device stuff on the Android device. Though I've been unable to connect to the iPad since the start, I only used the phone to prove the treadmill was able to communicate.

[frisbee]

Do you need to pair it through the phone settings menu?

I know you don't need to with BTLE sensors and trainers but some devices seem to want to be paired before the app detects them.

[steve-V8s]

Although it doesn't appear so to the user Bluetooth has become very complex with many different versions and flavours. Depending on how your Application is written it may prefer you first Pair with the device, or it may prefer you don't. The person who wrote the Application will probably have used someone else's code to handle the communication and that in turn relies on the operating system which is yet another bit of code. It has become an over complicated muddle as you would expect for something controlled by a commercial “committee”

First thing is to try pairing with the device outside the Application, next try something like nRFconnect to check that your two devices both have compatible versions of operating system. You should be able to exchange packets of data outside of the specific Application. That should give a clue as to what is happening.

Or get some devices that use RS232 it was So much better.

[bigandclever]

That nRF Connect app looks useful. The positive thing is that I at least know it can talk to other the Android phone, and from that I can tell what weird address the ipad should be looking for. Fingers crossed!

[buggalugs]

Once paired to one device you would usually need to tell the treadmill to go to pairing mode / become discoverable again somehow to get it to pair to a new device.

[megaphone]

I've had Bluetooth issues on my iPhone since upgrading ios15. Keep having to manually connect to my TomTom, same with the car radio, used to be very reliable before the upgrade.

[bigandclever]

I know we all love a good thread resolution.

Managed to get a workable solution going on the iPad by connecting to the Bluetooth address (nothing so useful like a real name) via the nRF Connect app. Then when I open the KinoMap app to control the treadmill, it picked up the address as iConsole something or other and allows connection. The ‘native’ iOS Bluetooth connections window thing simply doesn’t see it at any time.

Of course now the wifi connection to the iPad isn’t good enough to actually stream a video, but that’s another problem

So 10 PHpoints to Steve-v8s for suggesting nRF Connect.